THE PAWNBROKER.
Ross never took his gaze from the paper until he had read it through:
then he folded the pages back and reperused every word, with a burning,
eager question in the eyes, that seemed to devour each syllable as it
arose to view. The perusal had left him pale to the lips. He held the
pages with a firm, hard grip, as if he feared they would escape him,
long after he had mastered their contents. Then he arose, and began to
pace the floor, with a slow, heavy tread, pondering over many things in
his mind, with a restless burning of the eyes that bespoke a storm at
the heart.
How was he to appease this craving curiosity? In what way was he to
arrive at the truth regarding this girl, whose future had been placed in
his hands, by the document still clutched, tightly, there?
Laurence was right. Herman Ross was not a man to falter in a case like
this. If the girl had claims, he was resolved to search them out, and
maintain them after they were found. But something more exciting than
mere determination—an almost frenzied wish to learn the whole truth
possessed the man. All the proofs that existed he would have at once.
Suspense was more than he could bear.
Ross took his hat, and went out again, walking rapidly toward the
Laurence cottage. This time he sought the back entrance, and found Mrs.
Laurence alone in her kitchen. Her keen, grey eyes were as hard as
steel, when she turned them upon him, with a look that seemed half fear
half defiance.
“Well,” she said, sharply, “you know it all now. Is it in you to take
her away from us, now that we need her more than ever?”
“I have come to ask some questions. This paper speaks of articles that
are in your possession. May I look at them?”
Mrs. Laurence sunk into a chair; the little color natural to her face
died out, leaving only a flush around the eyes.
“I—I cannot give them to you just now,” she stammered. “Did the paper
speak of them?”
“Yes; and they are important—very important.”
“But how was I to know that you would ever come, or that anyone—a man
particularly—would want a lot of baby-clothes?”
“But I do want them, and at any cost must have them,” said Ross, almost
fiercely, “Surely they are not destroyed?”
“Destroyed? No; I haven’t done that.”
Ross drew a deep breath, and the hot color, which mounted to his face,
died out as the woman completed her sentence.
“But they are not all on hand.”
“Not on hand?”
“What right have you to question me so? Most of the things are here; but
we were starving, sir—starving! Do you know what that means? I pawned
one or two things. There, you have the truth. Go in and look at the pale
girl lying there; then wonder, if you can, that I gave up everything to
keep her from dying before my eyes.”
“But they can be found? Surely they are not out of reach?” said Ross,
anxiously.
“I don’t know. We haven’t been rich enough to redeem anything; but you
shall have the tickets. Wait.”
Mrs. Laurence went up the back stairs, and left Ross walking restlessly
up and down the kitchen. She was gone some time, but came down at last,
carrying a bundle in her hand.
“Here are the things,” she said curtly. “Yellow as saffron, with lying;
but here they are.”
She opened the bundle, and shook out a long infant’s frock, trimmed half
a yard deep with Valenciennes lace and embroidery, all yellow with age,
but of exquisite richness.
Ross laid it aside with an impatient movement of the hand.
“It tells nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
“The moths have got into the flannel,” said Mrs. Laurence, passing her
hand under the rich, silken embroidery of a flannel skirt; “but you can
see the pattern, for they never touch silk. Some lady did that, let me
tell you, with her own fingers. This is no hired work.”
Ross glanced at the pretty grape-vine, which had grown golden on the
riddled flannel, and was himself struck by its beautiful finish. All at
once he snatched it from the woman’s hold, and examined it more closely,
as if he saw something curious in every leaf and tendril.
“I should know the pattern. Somewhere I have seen it before,” he
muttered, in a voice that was almost inaudible; “but where? how?”
“There is nothing else but this mite of a shirt, with lace around it
like a cobweb, and the linen so fine you could almost pack it in a
thimble,” said Mrs. Laurence, warmed into soft, womanly feeling by the
sight of these little garments.
“Nothing more? But the shawl, the coral—where are they?”
“Pawned!” was the curt answer. “I told you so.”
“Where? Let me look at the tickets,” was the impatient rejoinder.
Mrs. Laurence drew an old, worn porte monnaie from her pocket, and took
from it two pawn-tickets, which she handed to her visitor, almost
smiling at the disappointment that lay before him.
Ross glanced at the tickets, and dropped them to the table in bitter
distress. They had been forfeited a whole year.
“I did not suppose they would amount to much now,” said Mrs. Laurence,
picking up the papers. “Sold long ago, I dare say.”
Ross took the tickets from her hand again, and read the address with a
forlorn hope that the articles, so important to his search, might be
found unsold. He left the house at once, and proceeded to the
pawnbroker’s, scarcely heeding or caring that the whole world saw him
enter a place that is the last foothold of poverty before it drops into
abject want.